A Last Dance for Leonard Cohen

The New York Times –  The musician and poet released “You Want It Darker” 19 days before his death in 2016. His son, Adam, finished more songs from those sessions for a posthumous album. “The last time Leonard Cohen appeared in public was in mid-October 2016 at a Los Angeles news conference for his 14th studio album, “You Want It Darker,” just a few weeks before his death. Behind him hung a Canadian flag and beside him sat his son, Adam, a musician who had served as producer on the stirring LP. At one point Cohen, stooped and frail but sharp as ever in an impeccably tailored black suit, treated the audience to a recitation from a piece still in progress. He drew a breath, and then in that inimitable baritone, he began:

Listen to the hummingbird Whose wings you cannot see Listen to the hummingbird Don’t listen to me

The audience applauded, and Cohen — who retreated at the height of his fame to live for five years in a Buddhist monastery — demurred with a characteristically self-abnegating joke: “I would say the hummingbird deserves the royalties on that one.” The interviewer asked if the song would appear on his next album. Said the ailing, 82-year-old Cohen, “G-d willing.” It seems to have been his will. “Listen to the Hummingbird” is the final track on Cohen’s posthumous new album, “Thanks for the Dance,” which will be released on Friday. The raw audio of that passage from the news conference was tracked down by Adam Cohen and the engineer Michael Chaves, who mixed out the buzzing tone of the room’s halogen lights and composed around it a gentle, unobtrusive piano melody. Adam had already done the same for many of the other vocal takes and half-finished songs his father left behind… [this article includes a link to Leonard Cohen – Happens to the Heart (Official Video)]